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CHAPTER EIGHT

“THE ICE CREAM may not be essential,” Angie admitted, though she was reluctant to give ground.

“Good.” Jefferson crossed it off the list with a little too much enthusiasm, and then muttered, “If I was going to get ice cream, it wouldn’t be chocolate, anyway.”

“What kind would it be?” she asked, curious despite herself. You could probably tell a lot about a man by the kind of ice cream he liked.

But he only spared her a glance that made her feel as if the question had been highly personal, like asking if he preferred boxers or briefs.

“You know,” he said, displeasure deepening his voice even more, “I offered to pick up a few things in town because I have another errand to do there, but a list like this? I’ll be wandering in the market for hours. They’ll have to send in a Saint Bernard to find me, hopefully with a keg of brandy around his neck. Brandy.” He squinted at her list and crossed something off. She was fairly certain it was the cooking sherry.

“I hate going to the market, anyway,” he admitted.

“That explains the frozen bean burrito for breakfast.”

“Yes, it does,” he said unapologetically. “One-stop shopping. I stop at the freezer, fill my basket, and leave. I can be done in forty-three seconds.”

“Well, you should at least be familiar with where the ice cream is if you’re such a fan of the freezer section,” she said. She should leave it at that. Really, she should. But she didn’t. “Why do you hate going to the market?”

“These people have known me since I was six years old. They have an annoying tendency to fuss over me,” he snapped. “You’re not the first person to think my food selections are not that great. All those busybodies peering in my basket.”

Not everyone, she guessed. Women. It was a small town. He was probably its most eligible bachelor. And damned unhappy about it, too. She could just imagine them clucking over him at the supermarket.

She made a note to herself. No clucking. No fussing. He was right. She was not his mother.

“There’s only one solution,” he said.

She held her breath. Either he was going to throw out the list or reconsider her employment.

But as it turned out, there was a third option, which she had not even considered.

“You’ll have to come and do the shopping yourself.” He held out the list, and she snatched it from him, trying not to show her delight at this unexpected turn of events. “I’ll send you off to the market while I run my other errands.”

“It won’t put you out in the least to have me along,” she said. It sounded like a promise.

“Yeah, whatever.” He didn’t have the grace to appear even slightly grateful she was going to get some decent supplies for him. He glanced at his watch. “I can’t go until later this afternoon. Can you be ready around four-thirty?”

She sighed. “That means frozen bean burritos for lunch, I’m afraid.”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” he said drily.

It was when she left his office that she remembered he said he went to Anslow by boat. And she had said she thought that was romantic, even though she shouldn’t have done. Anyway, she scolded herself, if that was her idea of romance, it was no wonder that her fiancé had left her for someone who wanted to live on a beach in Thailand!

Well, if she was not Jefferson’s mother, she was even less likely a romantic prospect. Luckily for her—and for tired-of-women-fussing-over-him Jefferson—she was completely disillusioned in that department. Harry, and then Winston, had seen to that.

What a relief. Because feeling romantic about her boss in any context, including a boat ride, could lead to dreadful complications, even in two short weeks.

But for some horrible reason, even as she vowed off romance, Angie thought of his lips brushing her cheek the night before. And she blushed even more deeply than she had over the mispronunciation of a word.

She squeezed as much activity as she could into the day. By the time four-thirty rolled around, the dishes and laundry were completely caught up and the kitchen was gleaming. It was hot, though. A thermometer on the outside of the kitchen window told her it was a hundred and two degrees outside when she slipped up to her room and showered the day’s grime off.

Angie had hauled her meager suitcase up the stairs to her room. She had not, in her panicked flight from Calgary, packed one thing that might impress Jefferson Stone. It was too hot to impress, anyway. She slipped on a clean white T-shirt and a very simple wraparound skirt she had designed and made herself. Then she ran a brush through hair that was springing up all over the place.

“Ready?” he asked as she came down the stairs.

“Is it always so hot here?” She regarded Jefferson. He didn’t look hot at all in a summer sports shirt and light khaki shorts. He looked cool and confident and composed—a man who did not invite fussing at the supermarket.

“This is a pretty average summer day. You could have turned on the air-conditioning.”

“I was hoping to freshen up the house by leaving all the windows open. I think I’ve succeeded only at letting the heat in. How are we going to keep the groceries from wilting?”

We. As if they were a partnership. She contemplated how easily the “we” had slipped from her lips.

He grabbed a large cooler from the storage cabinet by the back door and then led her out the back door and across the deck. She noticed he did not bother locking the door they came out. He paused before taking the stairs down, scanning the nearby mountains.

“What?”

“Just looking at the clouds,” he said.

She followed his gaze. The clouds were huge, pure white and fluffy as cotton balls, obliterating the tops of the mountains. “They’re beautiful,” she said. “Can you see anything in them?”

He cast her a glance, shook his head and snorted.

“Well, I can,” she said stubbornly. “It looks like a horse kicking up clouds of snow behind it.”

He looked back at the clouds, squinted, then shook it off.

“It’s not unusual to get a thunderstorm late in the day when it’s hot like this,” he said. “Hopefully, it will hold off.”

“I don’t know. I feel as if I’d love to stand out in the rain right now.” The heat was absolutely withering.

He looked as if he was going to say something but, with one more glance at the clouds and at her, changed his mind.

They went down a steep staircase, carved into stone, that led to a crescent of private white-sand beach and to a boat dock. It seemed with every step closer to the water, the air cooled.

“Oh,” Angie said, looking at the sleek boat bobbing at its moorings. “It looks like something out of James Bond.” Come to think of it, he looked like something out of James Bond!

He stepped from the dock to the boat with absolute ease despite the cooler in his hands and the bobbing of the boat.

“Wait,” he snapped when she tried to follow. He stored the cooler and came back. He reached out his hand to her, and she took it and leaned forward for the long and rather scary step down. He sensed her hesitation and let go of her hand. Then he put his hands around her waist, lifted her easily into the boat and set her back on her feet.

For a moment they stood there, looking at each other, his hands still cupping her waist. She glimpsed the man he had been last night. Angie had a sense of time stopping, of being highly aware of the way the hot afternoon sunshine felt on her skin and of how it looked in the crisp darkness of his hair. She was aware of the shape of his lips and the moody gray of his eyes, the strength in those hands that practically encircled her waist. She was aware of the birds calling all around them, the annoyed chatter of a squirrel, the gentle lap of water against the hull of the boat.

She was aware of feeling exquisitely alive.

Then Jefferson abruptly released her. He tossed a cover over a seat beside the wheel, and she took it, aware of the scorching heat coming up through the cover. It was the kind of gorgeous white leather she thought was reserved for higher end cars.

He was back out on the dock releasing the boat from its moorings. He tossed the lines in the boat then gave it a shove with his foot before leaping with mountain goat agility over the swiftly widening gap of water between the dock and the boat.

He took the seat beside her, put a key in the ignition and powerful engines thrummed to life.

He motioned to a sliding panel located between their seats, slid it open briefly to show her a staircase leading into the hull of the boat. “Life jackets are in here, if we should need them. And facilities.”

There was a bathroom on board? “I’ve never been on a powerboat,” she murmured. “It seems very Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

He snorted at that. “It’s the reality of living on a lake. I’m afraid the realities of living in a place like this are easy to overlook on a beautiful summer day like this.”

She cast him a glance, but his lips were pressed together as if he thought he had said too much.

He snapped the slider shut, then expertly backed the vessel out of its mooring, guided it to the mouth of the bay and opened the throttle.

“But you like it, don’t you?”

“Absolutely. But I grew up with it. I understand there are certain hardships and inconveniences associated with living in a remote place.”

There was something about the way he said I that alerted Angie of something deeper going on.

“Your wife didn’t like it,” she guessed softly.

“She thought she would, but—” He shrugged. His voice drifted away, and he squinted intently at the water ahead of them.

“But?” she prodded carefully.

He shot her a look. “But she didn’t,” he said tersely. “Look, there’s an eagle.”

The fact that he had pointed out the bird to distract her did not make it any less magnificent. She watched, awed, as the bald eagle floated on the wind current.

Then, clear of his bay, Jefferson opened it up. The nose of the boat lifted, and they rocketed across the smooth surface of the water, cutting it cleanly, leaving sprays of white foam in their wake.

“Oh,” she called gratefully over the sounds of the engines, “it’s as if the air-conditioning has been turned on.” She could feel a fine spray of water misting her skin. The wind tangled in her hair. It was glorious on such a hot day. It was so sensual it made her feel almost delirious. Angie laughed out loud.

Jefferson glanced at her, and his gaze held before he looked away. The stern line that had appeared around his mouth at the mention of his wife softened.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she called to him over the powerful purr of the engines. “It’s fun. Oh, my gosh, this is so much fun.”

* * *

Jefferson glanced at her. Angie’s face was alight, and she laughed out loud again as he opened up the throttle even more. The boat lifted from the water and then went back down with a bone-jarring whack that sent spray right over the windshield. The wind was wreaking havoc on her curls.

It was so completely different from last night when she had awoken in terror that he gave himself over to it a tiny bit. He was trying his best to hold himself away from her, but her laughter and her genuine enjoyment were an enchantment.

He reminded himself, sternly, what he had said to her this morning.

That’s the problem with improvements. They make you dissatisfied with the way things were before.

Jefferson was well aware that Angie could be that kind of problem. She could storm his world and it wasn’t just because she was so cute with the wind tangling in her hair, and her T-shirt molded to the front of her, her slender legs shown off to advantage by a red-and-white flowered skirt. It went deeper: her vulnerability and her laughter, her recipes and ideas. She could pry secrets best left untold—like the secret of Hailey’s growing discontent with the lake life—from him. She could make him dissatisfied with the life he’d had before she had arrived.

Despite her diminutive size, he was well aware she was a powerful presence. And right now, with the wind catching in her hair and the laughter bubbling out of her? She was beautiful.

In fact, it was dangerous how attractive he found her. He reminded himself of what he had told himself last night. It was an equation, not unlike the equations he put together for companies and corporations. One plus one equals.

And this equation went like this: caring about somebody equaled pain. It left you wide-open to a world of hurt.

And yet, if he contemplated the past few years of his life, where he thought he had evaded more hurt at all costs, he saw a great stretch of emptiness that he was suddenly and acutely aware had caused pain of its own.

He hated that. Angie had been in his life one day. It was just a little over twenty-four hours since she had arrived on his doorstep and cajoled her way into his house and his life. And something was shifting. That something was his own perception, which he was aware could be the most powerful thing of all.

Even knowing that, even knowing that he was playing with fire, he could not resist her smile.

“So, you have seriously never been on a powerboat before?” he called over the powerful thrum of the engines.

“Grew up in a place that was landlocked,” she said. “It was just my mom and me. We would have never had the resources to go on a boat.”

“Where was your dad?”

The carefree look disappeared from her face. “He left when I was ten. It was a shock. Nothing had seemed really wrong between him and my mother. Someone else caught his fancy. He didn’t really factor into our lives, much, after that.”

“It may be the way of the world,” Jefferson said, and he could hear the tightness in his own voice, “but I always feel put out when I hear people have thrown away a family—for something as ridiculous as something or someone else catching their fancy—when mine was taken from me. Do they not understand the value of what they have?”

Angie reached across the space that separated them and laid her hand on his wrist. It was just for a second, a small gesture, but in that moment he felt as if she got it. She got exactly what he was saying.

“My grandparents’ generation had many things right,” he said. He had inherited strong traditional values from them. He still remembered his shock when Hailey had told him after they married that she didn’t want children. It was the kind of thing they should have discussed first, but they had been so caught up in the passion they hadn’t. And he would have never left her because of it. Never.

“They did have many things right,” she agreed.

The mood had become somber, and Jefferson realized he wanted to make her laugh again. He was ridiculously pleased by the total lack of worry and tension in her as she embraced the mild adventure of a boat racing across a lake.

He gave in to a small temptation to show her how much fun it could be, and began to cut powerful S patterns through the water. The boat was so responsive. It leaned deep into the twists.

Instead of hanging on tight, she threw wide her arms. She held out her hand to catch the spray. She chortled with uninhibited delight.

And a trip that should have taken him ten minutes took double that, as he traveled the long way, cutting big looping S’s across the mirror surface of a lake that they had all to themselves.

He finally pulled into the mouth of Anslow Bay.

“It is so beautiful,” she whispered.

He followed her gaze to the shoreline. It was beautiful. He felt as if he was looking at it with fresh eyes: the cluster of pastel-colored houses, visible through the thick greenery of trees, climbing up the hills around the bay. A church spire shone brilliant white in the afternoon sun.

But he had seen Anslow from the water a thousand times before. He was aware, again, of the sway Angie was holding on his perception. He dared to glance at her.

She was what was beautiful. He made himself look away, cut back the engines and focus on docking at the public pier that was at the heart of downtown Anslow.

He was almost afraid to look at her, again, and he was annoyed with his fear. Still, he leaped out of the boat and onto the dock to moor his boat. When he looked back at her after fastening the lines, he understood his fear completely. Angie’s skirt had ridden up her legs. Her hair was crazy. Her cheeks were bright from wind and sunshine. Freckles were darkening over that little snub of a nose. Her lips were curved up in a delighted smile. And her eyes were shining with a light that a man could live to see.

It was with reluctance that he leaned from the dock and held out his hand to her. As he suspected, when she took it, it was as if an electrical circuit had been completed. His awareness of her was jolting. Her hand was soft in his, and yet strong. He gave a little tug and she flew up onto the dock beside him. He didn’t release her. They stood staring at each other.

“There are no words for the way you just made me feel,” she whispered.

Because of the boat ride? Or the confidences they had shared? Or the way it had felt, just now, when their hands touched and the circuit was completed?

And then, he supposed because there were no words, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, in almost exactly the same way he had kissed hers the night before.

Her lips were as soft as a hummingbird’s wings on his skin. He felt that electrical awareness of her tingle right into his belly.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and stepped away from him, embarrassed. As well she should be!

You didn’t kiss your boss! But, somehow, the words evaporated within him. Instead, he said, “The store is right across the street. Just walk to the end of the pier, go through that gate, turn right and cross the street. Have them put everything on my account.”

She wasn’t fooled that he hadn’t been affected. It bothered him that she wasn’t fooled. Then she ducked her head and scurried away.

He touched his cheek. That moment of weakness—of wanting to make her happy—had cost him. He knew that. He knew something so small as that kiss could change everything. It could make a man dissatisfied with what he’d had before.

If he let it.

“Hellooo, Jefferson.”

He had just left the dock area and was making his way through the summer-crowded streets to the post office. He whirled around.

Maggie. He hoped she had not seen him receiving kisses on the dock.

“I’ve been hoping to run into you. Are you going to come, Jefferson? To our fund-raising event? A Black Tie Affair?”

Jefferson was annoyed with himself. He’d been so distracted by that damned grocery list, and by Angie, that he hadn’t really prepared himself for an encounter with Maggie. For him, going into Anslow was often like running the gauntlet.

He looked at Maggie’s face. In its wrinkled lines he saw wisdom and compassion and caring...for him. She was trying so desperately to try to make something good come from something bad. She was trying so desperately to bring him back from the abyss.

A few days ago, he would have made an excuse. He would not have been able to see the naked caring in her face. No. Maybe he would have seen it. But he would not have allowed himself to feel it.

But now, after he had just lectured about people throwing away the things that mattered? But now, after he had made an effort to be better man? After he had comforted the crying, terrified woman instead of walking away? After he had committed to giving her that moment’s enjoyment she had not experienced as a child? After he had committed to making her laugh? It was hard to put that particular horse back in the barn.

He reached out and touched Maggie’s shoulder. “Of course, I’m coming,” he heard himself say.

“Oh, Jefferson, that means so much to me.”

Her eyes had tears in them. He was not sure he could handle any more tears this week. He was at his quota. So, he gave Maggie’s shoulder one more squeeze and went on his way.

He wanted to believe nothing about him was changed.

But the fact that he was considering feelings—those pesky unpredictable things—meant something major had changed already, not needing any kind of permission from him.